ad-free
Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-12-06
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6yixyiJcos
twenty six percent on the nation's report card dots the percentage of you lost twelfth graders who are proficient in math in America we pride ourselves as being an exceptional country but this twenty six percent sound exceptional do you raise your hand if you think as a country we need to do way better than this I'm with you we all need math but why are so many
kids confused by it is it because only twenty six percent of people are hard wired for math while seventy four percent are not after working with thousands of kids I can tell you this isn't the case at all kids don't understand math because we've been teaching at as a de humanize subjects but if we made math human again it would start to make sense again you're
probably wondering how does not every human in the first place so think about it math is the human language just like English Spanish or Chinese because it allows people to communicate with each other even the name sometimes people need at the language of math to conduct trade to build monuments and to measure the land for farming this idea of math is a language isn't exactly in
you a great philosopher once said the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics so you see even Galileo agrees with me but somewhere along the line we've taken this language of math which is about the real world around us and we've abstracted it beyond recognition and docks why kids are confused let me show you what I mean read this third grade California not
standard and see if it makes sense when you're old understand a fraction one ever be as a quantity form by one part one hole is partition the to be equal parts I understand a fraction ever be as the quantity formed by a parts of size one Overby and if you gave this description to an eight year old you probably get a reaction like this to a
math experts this standard makes sense but to a kid it's absolute torture I chose this example specifically because fractions are foundational to algebra trigonometry and even calculus so if kids don't understand fractions in elementary and middle school they've got a tough road ahead of them in high school but is there a way to make fractions simple and easy for kids to understand yes just remember that
math is a language and use that to your advantage for example when I teach fifth graders how to add and subtract fractions I start with the apples with apples lesson first I ask what's one apple plus one apple and kids will often say to which is partially correct have them include the words as well since math is the language so it's not just to its two
apples next is three pencils plus two pencils you all know that pencils with pencils give you consoles so everyone how many pencils hello why pencils is right and the key is you included the words I tried this lesson with my five year old niece went after she added pencils and pencils I asked her what's four billion plus one billion and my and overheard this and she
scolded me and said are you crazy she's in kindergarten how feasible snow four billion plus one billion undaunted my niece finishes counting looks up and says I don't know and I said that's right it is five billion my I just sicker head and laughed because he did not expect that from a five year old but all you have to do is take a language approach and
mac becomes intuitive and easy to understand then I asked her a question that kindergarteners are definitely not supposed to know what's one third plus one third and immediately she answered two thirds so if you're wondering how could he possibly know that which he doesn't know about numerators and denominators yet you see she wasn't thinking about numerators and denominators she thought of the problem this way and
she used one apple plus one apple as her analogy to understand one third plus one third so if even that kindergartners can add fractions you better believe that every fifth grader can do it as well just for fun I ask Sir high school algebra question what's seven EC squared plus two X. squared and this little five year old girl correctly answered nine EC squared she didn't
need any exponent rules figure that out so when people say that we are either hard wired for math or not it's not true math is a human language so we all have the ability to understand it we need to take a language approach to math urgently because too many kids are lost and they're anxious about math and it doesn't have to be that way I work
with an angry frustrated high school student once couldn't pass algebra because she only knew forty four percent of her multiplication I told her that's like trying to read and only knowing forty four percent of the alphabet holding you back she couldn't factor or solve equations and she had no confidence in that as a result this teenager had no confidence in herself I told her we have
to start with multiplication because once you know all your facts by heart everything gets easier and it'll be like having a fast pass to every ride at Disneyland what do you think and she said okay so he systematically learned her times tables in four weeks and yes even multiplication has language embedded in it you'd be surprised how many kids don't realize seven times three can be
spelled out as seven times three which just means three seven times just like this so when kids see it this way they quickly realized that repeated addition is slow and inconvenient so they gladly memorize that three seven times always give you twenty one so for this teenager who was at risk of dropping out becoming fluent and confidence in multiplication was a game changer because for the
first time could focus on problem solving instead of counting on her fingers I knew she had turned the corner when she figured out that a two year car lease at four hundred forty five dollars a month it cost you ten thousand six hundred eighty dollars and she looked at me disapprovingly and said Polly sock pensive at that moment not was no longer causing problems for her
she was using math to solve problems as a responsible adult as an educator it's my duty to challenge kids to retire so I leave you with this challenge our country's stock twenty six percent proficient and I challenge you to push that number higher this is important because mathematical thinking not only builds young minds but our kids need it to imagine and build a future that doesn't
